Routing and Policy Management

SBC 5xx0/5400/7000 routing and policy management involves high performance SIP routing with scalable routing policies for service-provider and enterprise networks.

Key Features

• AD Service
• Screening, blocking, routing, presentation, call type filters
• Route prioritization
• Leading digit routing; International routing; URI based routing
• Digit/parameter manipulation
• ENUM Service
• E911 support; Priority Call handling
• Toll-free routing
• Least cost routing
• Number portability

Policy Server Modes

The SBC 5xx0/5400/7000 servers provide the following routing and policy management options for your network:

• Embedded Routing Engine (ERE) – ERE provides less routing and policy management functionality and is intended for smaller networks with no complex routing needs.
• External Ribbon Policy Server (PSX) –  PSX combines complex call-routing functionality with exceptional capacity to support larger networks.

SBC is configurable to interact with up to nine centralized external PSXs, or a combination of external PSXs and ERE.

For performance and capacity comparison of ERE and PSX, refer to Routing Engines Comparison.

Deployment Scenarios

SBC ERE

Basic and Advanced ERE

Basic ERE is the default routing engine on the SBC for performing basic call routing services. The Advanced ERE is a licensed option for customers requiring expanded routing functionality.

The ERE can be installed by selecting the embedded routing engine (ERE) option while installing the SBC application using the EMA Platform Mode. For more information on installing SBC application (ERE Configuration), refer to Installing SBC Application.

ERE With External PSX

You can configure the SBC to use an external PSX for routing and the ERE for fallback routing. When the external PSX is up and running, all routing is handled by the external PSX and ERE routing configurations are ignored.

Thus, in the unlikely event that the external PSX goes down, you can fall back to ERE routing by simply setting the SBC's remote server state to 'disabled' from the EMA UI.

To set up an external PSX for routing, perform the following:

1. Configure remote server from EMA (refer to Policy Server - Remote Server for details).
   
   1. Navigate to Configuration > SystemSetup tab.
   2. Click the arrow next to Policy Server perspective in the navigation panel, and select Remote Server option. The "Remote Server" configuration window displays.
   3. Configure the remote policy server settings to use the external PSX.
2. Provision routing for the SBC in the external PSX using the PSX Manager.
3. Provision routing from EMA (refer to Category - Call Routing for details).
   
   1. Navigate to Configuration > System Provisioning tab.
   2. From the Category drop-down menu, select Call Routing.
   3. Choose applicable perspectives to provision routing using ERE.

Centralized PSX

The centralized PSX server combines call routing functionality with the exceptional capacity of storing tens of millions of call routes in a single database. This SBC-Centralized PSX deployment distributes that routing intelligence to every PSX server in the network and simplifies the provisioning process. For more information on PSX, refer to the PSX Documentation.  

The following figure depicts the SBC deployed with external PSX and EMS.

To configure external PSXs as Active and Standby remote policy servers from the SBC 5xx0/5400/7000 server, refer to Configuring SBC for External PSX.

Configurations Controlled by ERE

The following SBC configuration objects are controlled by the ERE.

• AD Attribute Profile
• AD Profile
• Aor Group
• Call Parameter Filter Profile
• Call Parameter Filter Group Profile
• Call Recording Criteria
• Call Routing
• Carrier (Global object)
• Class of Service
• Codec Entry
• Codec List Profile
• Codec Routing Priority
• Country (Global object)
• Crypto Suite Profile
• DM/PM Criteria (Digit Parameter Handling object)
• DM/PM Rule (Digit Parameter Handling object)
• Domain Controller Profile
• e911 (Servers object)
• e911VpcDevice (Servers object)
• Element Routing Priority Profile
• enumDomainName
• enumDomainName Label
• Enum Service (Servers object)
• Feature Control Profile
• Holiday Profile
• IP Signaling Peer Group
• Ip Signaling Profile
• Lwresd Profile
• Media Qos KPI Profile
• NPA/Nxx (Global object)
• Number Globalization Profile
• Numbering Plan (SIP Trunk Group Policy)
• Number Translation Criteria (Digit Parameter Handling object)
• Packet Service Profile
• Prefix Profile (Digit Parameter Handling object)
• Route (Call Routing object)
• Routing Label (Call Routing object)
• Script (Global object)
• Signaling Profile
• Signaling QoS KPI Profile
• SIP Domain (Global object)
• Srs Group Cluster
• Srs Group Profile
• Subscriber (Global object)
• Time Range Profile
• Trunkgroup
• Voip Subscriber

Disable or Enable ERE on Cloud Instances

When an instance is launched on cloud platforms, if the instance is installed with the "enableERE" option set to false in the user data provided to the instance, the ERE processes will not run, and the policy must be provided by an external PSX cluster. When an instance is launched on cloud platforms with type m-sbc or type slb, the ERE processes will not run.

Therefore, the I-SBC and S-SBC can use the local policy server, but only if it is installed with the "enableERE" set to true in the instance user data.

Example userData file

{
    "ThirdPartyCpus": "0",
    "ThirdPartyMem": "0",
    "enableCoreEMA": "enabled",
    "enableERE": "enabled",
    "enableREST": "enabled",
    "enableTS": "enabled"